Nigeria-Crops

MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)

Nigeria's climate permits the cultivation of a variety
of
crops in a pattern that emerged in earlier centuries in
response
to local conditions. As in other West Africa states,
rainfall is
heaviest in the south, where the forests and savannas
benefit
from abundant precipitation and relatively short dry
seasons. The
staples are root crops, including cassava, yams, taro
(cocoyams), and sweet potatoes. Tree crops--cacao,
oil
palm, and rubber--constitute the area's main commercial
produce
(see
table 11, Appendix). Cacao, from which cocoa is made,
grows
mostly in the southwest. Oil palms (whose kernels can be
made
into palm wine) predominate in the southeast and are
numerous in
the south-central area. Rubber stands are common in
south-central
and southeastern Nigeria.

Smallholder farmers, who use simple production
techniques and
bush-fallow cultivation and cultivate areas of one-half to
two
hectares each, contribute two-thirds of farm production.
In most
areas, some noncash crops are grown, such as sorghum,
yams,
cassava, cowpeas, millet, corn, cocyams, sweet
potatoes,
and rice.

The northern third of Nigeria, which experiences a dry
season
of five to seven months, during which less than
twenty-five
millimeters of rain falls, lies mostly in the
Sudan (see Glossary)
savanna and the arid
Sahel (see Glossary) zone.
There,
the staples are millet, cowpeas, and a drought-resistant
variety
of sorghum known as guinea corn. Corn is also cultivated,
as well
as rice in suitable lowland areas. The north's principal
commercial crops are cotton and groundnuts.

Between the arid north and the moist south lies a
Guinea
savanna region sometimes referred to as the
middle belt (see Glossary).
This area produces staples such as yams,
sorghum,
millet, cassava, cowpeas, and corn, with rice an important
crop
in some places. The middle belt's southern edge represents
the
lower limits of the northern grain-dominated economy. The
most
significant commercial crop of the middle belt is sesame
(or
benniseed).

Most Nigerians eat grains, but the production and
consumption
of sorghum (guinea corn) and millet are heavily
concentrated in
the savanna north. In 1980 the two grains accounted for 80
percent of Nigeria's total grain production. Corn
production in
the savanna middle belt benefits from heavier rainfall,
which
frequently permits two crops a year. The demand for rice,
much of
it imported, increased dramatically during the affluent
1970s,
but had to be cut back during the foreign exchange
shortages of
the 1980s.

Cocoa and groundnuts were Nigeria's two major exports
until
petroleum surpassed both in 1965. Cocoa, cotton,
groundnuts, oil
palm products, and rubber were the principal export crops
in the
1960s and early 1970s, but with export reorientation, only
cocoa
remained of any importance after 1975. Although Nigeria
was the
world's largest exporter of groundnuts in the early 1970s,
groundnuts fell from the export list by the end of the
1970s as a
result of the severe Sahel drought of 1972-74 and a viral
disease
in 1975. With assistance from the World Bank, the
government
restored cocoa production in the late 1970s and 1980s
through
replanting programs and producer price supports. The
resulting
increase in cocoa output (to 200,000 tons in 1988) kept
Nigeria
in third place among world cocoa producers, after Ivory
Coast and
Ghana.

Although the devaluation of the naira and the abolition
of
agricultural marketing boards in FY 1986 were intended to
increase cash-crop output, the results were disappointing.
The
failure to significantly increase output was caused partly
by the
lack of incentives for producers to invest in maintenance.

In the late 1980s, Nigeria reduced the structural bias
against agricultural activity by decontrolling farm
prices,
maintaining subsidies on fertilizer and farm exports, and
maintaining import bans on some food items. Despite the
granting
of increased incentives to the domestic farming industry,
agricultural output rose slowly because of inadequate
transportation and power networks, a lack of appropriate
technology, and the ineffective application of rural
credit.
Although the domestic production of food did not decline,
on a
per capita basis food became less available during this
period.